What Teenagers Want You to Know | Roy Petitfils | TEDxVermilionStreet

the guy you see before you is wearing large shirt with a 34 inch waist but I wasn't always this way when I was 16 years old my mom brought me to a local grocery store under the auspices of shopping and she leads me to the back of the store where we see a six foot four burly butcher who's got a big red beard and he's wearing a blood-stained white coat he was clearly expecting us and he's waving us back with a bloody meat cleaver and a look at my mom not for the last time and say mom what are we doing here and she said you'll see baby and so we followed the butcher back into this deep cooler and as we walk through this deep damp cooler the smell of beef blood fills the air and I look up to my left and I see these cows that have been slaughtered and are cutting in half cut in half hanging from these chains alongside these small pigs hanging from chains which are being prepared for a cage in Boucherie and a cochon de lait and the butcher walks forward and he stands next to this big black metal platform with a pole sticking up from it in a big circle on top and he begins to explain Roy mad this here is a Toledo meat scale he said we use this to weigh all these farm animals you see hanging from those chains and I look at my mom mom what the hell are we doing here and she said baby your doctor called me today and he said that we have to get an accurate weight on you and I said so why don't we go to the doctor's office which is what we've done since I was born she said baby you haven't been able to weigh on the doctors scale in years it only goes up to 350 pounds and so it's 16 years old I'm standing in this damp cool air trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I weigh 350 pounds that I weigh more than 350 pounds but I'm thinking 351 Oh point seven tops and the butcher impatience like come on Roy get on up here so we can get an accurate weight on you and like anybody who's gone for a weigh-in I'm like because that's going to make a hell of a difference at this point and I step up onto this black cold steel platform and feel the cold on the bottom of my feet as I watched this long red needle spin to 454 and I hear the gasp in my mom's voice and I look down and I see the shame the sadness and the embarrassment trickled down her cheeks and I look over at this poor butcher who is having arguably the most awkward moment of his whole life whose life and my mom looks up at me and she says to her choked up voice we got to do something about this baby I said I know Mom we do but we didn't see like 34% of young people in America today I was born to a single-parent home like 20% of youth in America today I was born in poverty my mom didn't want that for me for the rest of my life and she certainly didn't want it for her grandchildren and for her for me to be able to get out of poverty it meant that I needed a private education which required her to work up to four jobs at a time sometimes leaving me alone after 12 years old and a rundown roach rat-infested apartment in generate Louisiana where many nights I would cry myself to sleep just waiting for my mom to come home but knowing that she's working so that I can be better and that I can have a better life I noticed as a young teenager that I began to have all of these bad feelings inside of me and at the time I didn't know what they were but I knew one thing that boudin and cracklin made it go away and in south Louisiana especially in Cajun country we have no shortage of good inexpensive food and so I began numbing the pain with the food and like any addict will tell you it just took more and more of what didn't work to make the pain go away and I got bigger and I got bigger and attending a private school with a bunch of fairly wealthy people and from my point of view slim and good-looking people you can imagine that I was picked on in fact I was unmercifully bullied through middle school up until my sophomore year of high school you see like a lot of people who gained weight I didn't gain my weight here in my stomach I gained it in my upper back and so one day I go to school and especially vicious moment my classmates at all stuff their gym and PE uniforms up the shirt the back of the shirt of one of my classmates and they had taped the sign on the back that said Roy and one of them comes up to me while taking this scene in and he sticks his hand underneath the flab the roll of fat in my upper back and he goes can you even feel that big boy I can't even feel the ribs in your back and the truth was I couldn't feel it physically but I felt it and I went home that day and not for the last time I prayed that I wouldn't wake up the next morning and have to undergo that torture ever again but I did a consistent negative attention up through tenth grade - whereas my junior year I was the object of no attention I would walk through the halls in my school and no one would pick on me and for a while I loved it it was great I went to school when people weren't unmercifully bullying me and I was like yes this is great but it didn't take long for me to realize that not only were they not picking on me they weren't even noticing me they were ignoring me and I remember at 17 thinking I preferred it when they picked on me and I learned a powerful lesson at 17 years old that has guided my life and the work I do today that unlike many and pop psychology say rejection is not our greatest fear our greatest fear is to be invisible but I did graduate and I went on to college and all of these people started coming up to me and they were smiling at me and they were asking me questions about myself I remember it vividly it was a white Catholic priest about a black deacon a Puerto Rican office manager a bunch of people who were my age some older and a Polish American Chicago transplant who saw me I remember today I would describe it as psychic shock I had no idea what it felt like to be looked at these people didn't seem to notice that I weighed 500 pounds either that or they just didn't seem to care but they included me they saw me they accepted me they invited me to go out to places with them and from the day that I walked into that Catholic Student Center about three years later thanks to these people most of whom include my very best friends to this day and my very best friend my wife I would lose nearly 300 pounds without surgery but it would be a mistaken it would be unfortunate if you left here today thinking that it came to talk to you about overcoming the challenges of poverty and obesity is serious and as important as those challenges are the challenge that I overcame wasn't being poor and wasn't being obese the challenge I overcame I overcame with the help of people who saw me who helped me to realize that I wasn't invisible today I'm here to talk to you about overcoming the challenges of invisibility the teenagers in our country today are desperately crying to be seen over the last 20 years it's been my mission to work with young people teenagers especially and to give them the gift that those people gave me when I was in college and it was the gift of being seen and in my work with young people what I've realized that what they want more than anything else is to be seen within the context of a meaningful relationship with adults but this shocks many adults who I talk with they're like why if teenagers want to be seen by us so much then why do they act the way they do why don't they just come out and ask for it and that's a good question in the words of dr. Bob McCarty teenagers are experienced rich but language poor dr. Bob a party's right teens are experience rich in language poor but they do want to be seen by us in the context of a meaningful relationship once I was leading a small group of teens in this 17 year old girl who was a junior in high school spoke up she said mr. pedophile which is what the teens often called me because they couldn't pronounce my last name which is a bit unfortunate when you do what I do for a living she said I know you don't have kids but if you did would you and your wife fly away to Paris for two weeks and leave your seventeen-year-old daughter home alone with her black American Express card no limit the keys to her Land Rover in the mansion all alone now luckily I had the wherewithal then to understand that this girl's parents were wealthy enough to be able to afford to have several attorneys on retainer and I did not answer that question and the budding counselor said well what do you think and she said you know I know I love my stuff don't get me wrong and she pulled the black card out and she kissed it and she's like I love you and she said now kill you if you tell my parents this but I love them more and more than any of this stuff I just want a relationship with them and I know I avoid them but they also avoid me and I don't know how to not avoid them but I don't want them to avoid me and I look around the circle and I see eight heads nodding in unison agreeing with this girl in the last twenty years I've heard this young 17 year old girl's sentiments expressed in thousands of different ways countless times from teenagers that they want to be in our presence despite their verbal and nonverbal actions to the contrary in addition to wanting to be in our presence they also want the greatest gift that we can give them which is the gift of our attention to pay attention to them I had a 18 year old boy young man brought into my office one time who was on the verge of being suspended from a local high school because he refused to stand up after the weekly all school assemblies and sing the school's alma mater he was a senior in high school and he sat on the front row and the administration and others didn't like it because when everyone else did that he didn't stand up his parents were also concerned because he was beginning to show signs of depression and they were just worried about him they had brought him to see two other counselors and they finally decided well I guess we'll just try the big bulb pedophile and to say that this kid didn't want to be in my office would be the understatement of the decade he came in with a scowl on his face his hat on not looking at me and he plops down in my couch and he says could we just get this over with and he had this accident was like it was like a blend of the Bronx Sicily in New Orleans and I said where are you from and he said Chalmette which is a town near New Orleans which was ravaged in the floodwaters following Hurricane Katrina and I said what brought you here to Lafayette to Cajun country and he said Katrina and I said tell me about it and he goes seriously but my parents paying you good money for me to come in here and talk to you about current events all day come on you know tell me tell me what Katrina was like for you and he said my mom called me out in the morning and she was screaming in the phone Eric make sure whatever you want to keep for the rest of your life go and put it in a duffel bag and we're going to be there to pick up you and your brothers and sisters in the van but only a duffel bag because we don't have enough room for you to bring all your crap and he said then you know we went to Baton Rouge and now we've settled here and all my friends are back in New Orleans and they're graduating from school this year and I'm not because my parents love this God forsaken town of Lafayette Louisiana and I looked at him and he goes are we done and said yeah almost I just have one question what was in your bag he said what so what was in your bag Eric he said what bag the bag that the duffel bag that you packed and put in the van said I don't feel like talking about this crop can we can we go look I know it's only half possession I'll tell my parents we went to full time you can collect your money I said what was in your bag Eric and his eyes glassed over and he said my dad's football jersey what school did you dad go to he said Holy Cross High School in New Orleans what else was in your bag my grandfather's high school diploma which school did your grandfather go to Eric Holy Cross High School in New Orleans what else was in your bag and the tears of streaming down his cheeks my uncle's on my dad and on my mom's side their senior ring and a state championship football what school did they go to Holy Cross High School in New Orleans I said let me see if I'm understanding you correctly you're about to be the first man and four generations of men in your family to break this unbroken legacy of men who graduate from Holy Cross High School and he is bawling at this point and he said through choked up voice he said yeah and these bastards expect me to stand up and sing my love of their tradition I left tradition this school barely twenty-five years old they don't know the first thing about tradition I'm sure something standing up and singing it and I said I don't blame you and we continued to visit and he calmed down and we visited for a few more weeks and I remember his parents calling me one day and they said you know what he doesn't complain about going back and he's getting better he said Roy thank you for seeing our son you know you don't have to be a psychotherapist to be able to see teenagers you don't need to go to grad school and you don't need a duffel bag of tricks but you do need the willingness to be able to see teenagers and they're desperate to be seen as you go out of here today I've already primed you you're going to be seeing teens everywhere maybe even a Jefferson Street pub illegally and you'll have the opportunity to see them or to look away you'll have the opportunity to smile at them what I wouldn't have given when I was a teenager for an adult to lovingly smile at me you could go up to him and you could ask them their name for the teens who are more close to you in your life you could text them send them a snapchat you can invite them out for coffee you can just talk with them it doesn't take much but they are desperate to be seen there's no one of us in here who can go out and see every teenager and give them that powerful gift of attention but each and every one of us can go out of here and see a teenager and in doing so remove from their life this cloak of invisibility and give them the gift of our attention and the gift of being seen I know that it will make a difference and I know that it made a difference in my life on behalf of all the invisible teenagers in America today and of myself thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,009,924

Rating: 4.94626 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Community, Individualism, Obesity, Poverty, Society, Youth

Id: fC2z69q3L0o

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2016